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PRnewswire | May 26, 2023
Fullsteam LLC ("Fullsteam"), a leading provider of integrated business management software and payments to customers across the Main Street economy, today announced that it has received significant new investment from founding sponsor Aquiline Capital Partners LLC ("Aquiline") and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ("ADIA"), along with a consortium of other investors. Aquiline will remain as the lead investor in the company and ADIA will become a significant minority investor. This infusion of capital will enable Fullsteam to enter its next phase of expansion, building upon its rapid organic growth and an impressive portfolio of seventy acquisitions to date.
Established in 2018 by CEO Michael Lawler and Aquiline, Fullsteam has been purpose-built and scaled to meaningfully transform the small to mid-sized merchant experience across multiple sectors, including specialty retail, field services, automotive, leisure, property management, association management, and other specialized markets. At the heart of its business model lies the integration of merchant payment processing and core vertical software. By seamlessly integrating payment processing products with comprehensive resources to accelerate software growth in each of its vertical solutions, Fullsteam allows its resident software entrepreneurs to continuously enhance the experience for its current base of approximately 50,000 customers.
Hamad Shahwan Aldhaheri, Executive Director of the Private Equities Department at ADIA, commented, "Fullsteam is well positioned to continue its strong growth trajectory by meeting the digitalized payments and software needs of its customers and pursuing further acquisition opportunities. We are delighted to partner with Aquiline and Fullsteam to support the business as it embarks on its next phase of growth."
Joe Pappalardo, Partner at Aquiline, said, "When we established Fullsteam with Mike and Greg Colella, our M&A leader, our goal was to address and accelerate two significant trends in vertical software: the adoption of business management across the small business economy and the convergence of this core software with merchant payment processing. Today, Fullsteam is emerging as a leading buyer and supporter of vertical software companies driving these two trends in North America. We are delighted to expand our existing relationship with ADIA through this transaction and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with Fullsteam to enhance the day-to-day experiences of its growing customer base."
Michael Lawler, CEO of Fullsteam, said: "This is an incredibly exciting day for Fullsteam and our entire team as we expand our strategy to transform the payments and software landscape across a wide range of industries. Leveraging our extensive expertise in integrated payments, growth-focused resources, and entrepreneur-centric culture, Fullsteam has a proven track record of helping business founders accelerate their companies' growth while providing exceptional customer service. With the continued support of Aquiline and ADIA, we eagerly anticipate expanding our family of vertical payments and software providers, serving the countless small and mid-sized businesses that form the backbone of our economy."
Goldman Sachs served as lead financial advisor and Raymond James served as financial advisor to Fullsteam. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as legal advisor for Aquiline and Fullsteam.
About Fullsteam Holdings LLC
Fullsteam is a leading payments and software company headquartered in Auburn, Alabama. Fullsteam provides streamlined payments infrastructure and enhanced operational support to better serve customers. Fullsteam is actively seeking further acquisitions across multiple software verticals.
About Aquiline Capital Partners LLC
Aquiline Capital Partners LLC is a private investment firm based in New York and London investing in companies across financial services and technology, healthcare and business services. The firm has $9.9 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2023.
About the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority
Established in 1976, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority ("ADIA") is a globally-diversified investment institution that prudently invests funds on behalf of the Government of Abu Dhabi through a strategy focused on long-term value creation.
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PRnewswire | May 24, 2023
BitPay, the world's leader in cryptocurrency payments, announced that Brave Wallet has implemented the BitPay Protocol, enabling its crypto wallet users to make easy, accurate, and reliable payments straight from the Brave privacy browser.
Brave Wallet users can now shop with crypto at thousands of top merchants online and in-store, including Newegg, APMEX, PacSun, AMC Theatres, and airBaltic. Crypto payments are seamlessly made from the Brave Wallet to pay for everyday purchases, travel, and large ticket items. BitPay supports the top cryptocurrencies, ensuring Brave Wallet users can use their preferred coin to make payments.
First launched in 2017, BitPay Protocol ensures accurate payments by eliminating payment exceptions including overpayments, underpayments, late payments, unconfirmed payments, and potential double-spends. As the crypto industry continues to evolve and attract a significant number of new customers, payment accuracy is imperative. The BitPay Protocol sets the industry bar for crypto payment quality enabling more accurate and reliable blockchain payments in-store and online.
"BitPay applauds Brave's adoption of the BitPay Protocol," said Stephen Pair, BitPay CEO. "With the hard work and dedication of the Brave team, we are able to promote payment quality online and in-store for both customers and merchants wanting to leverage the benefits of crypto payments."
"With this new integration from BitPay, we're expanding the utility of Brave Wallet and making it easier than ever for our users to spend their crypto on real world goods and services," said James Mudgett, VP of Web3 products at Brave.
The Brave Wallet is a secure, multi-chain cryptocurrency wallet built directly into the Brave web browser. In addition to paying with crypto, Brave Wallet users can buy, receive and send crypto assets across multiple chains. They can also import non-custodial wallets, track live crypto prices, swap coins and interact with Web3 DApps. Brave Wallet is available on desktop and mobile as a core feature of the Brave web browser. Download it today for Android, iOS, Linux and PC devices.
About BitPay
Founded in 2011, BitPay is one of the oldest cryptocurrency companies. As a pioneer in blockchain payment processing, the company's mission is to transform how businesses and people send, receive, and store money. Its business solutions eliminate fraud chargebacks, reduce the cost of payment processing, and enable borderless payments in cryptocurrency, among other services. BitPay offers consumers a complete digital asset management solution that includes the BitPay Wallet and BitPay Prepaid Card, enabling them to turn digital assets into dollars for spending at tens of thousands of businesses. The company has offices in North America, Europe, and South America and has raised more than $70 million in funding from leading investment firms including Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Virgin Group, and Aquiline Technology Growth.
About Brave
Brave Software's fast, privacy-oriented browser, combined with its blockchain-based digital advertising platform, is reinventing the Web for users, publishers, and advertisers. Users can opt into privacy-respecting ads that reward them with the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a frequent flyer-like token they can redeem or use to tip or contribute to publishers and other content creators. Brave is a driving force leading the way for Web3 adoption, directly supporting Web3 into the broader Web through its privacy browser, independent search engine, and browser-native, multi-chain crypto wallet. Brave currently has over 57 million monthly active users and over 1.7 million Creators.
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PRnewswire | May 23, 2023
Today, Ascend, the first modern insurance payments platform, announced the launch of their full integration with Veruna allowing for a seamless out-of-the-box solution that offers invoicing, point of sale financing, as well as automatic reconciliation and tracking of invoices back into accounting ledgers - all within the
Veruna platform.
Veruna's mission as the all-in-one CRM and AMS for independent agents is reinforced with this integration - allowing for a simple and integrated payments solution all within their Salesforce dashboard. Prior to this, integrations between Veruna and Ascend were set up on a per-client basis, but moving forward, all Veruna customers can now set up and enable this integration within minutes.
"It was important for us to deepen our partnership since our initial integration. Customers have expressed a desire for a consolidation of tools and simplification of tech stacks and this integration delivers on that - one partner, synced with your AMS/CRM, to handle all your billing, financing, and reconciliation workflows," said Andrew Wynn, co-CEO of Ascend.
This integration is a first for Veruna to have a single solution to handle all payment workflows including premium finance post policy placement.
"We are very excited to be able to enable best-in-class user experiences through integrations such as these. Instead of having to navigate between different portals and websites, we want all agency workflows to be able to run right through Veruna - saving teams countless hours and allowing them to focus on growing their business," said Colleen Wells, Chief Strategy Officer of Veruna.
About Ascend
Ascend is the modern insurance payments platform that provides an automated all-in-one solution for invoicing, financing, and payables. Founded by two-time insurtech entrepreneurs Andrew Wynn and Praveen Chekuri, Ascend helps distributors sell more by eliminating expensive and labor-intensive agency bill workflows, while providing insureds with the great online checkout and financing experience they've come to expect.
About Veruna
Veruna, founded in 2015, empowers independent insurance agencies, carriers, insurtechs, brokers, and MGAs to sell more insurance and retain valued customers. Veruna does that by providing a single user interface and database (AMS-CRM-in-one) enabling agents to sell more and retain better. To serve customers better, Veruna allows agencies and MGAs to build custom configurations to capture unique value propositions and integrate with numerous solutions. Delivering highly innovative insurance technology, Veruna allows agents to focus on one thing - your customers.
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